Nooelec Flycatcher - High Performance Dual-Channel RTL-SDR Raspberry Pi HAT for Flight Tracking & Aviation Monitoring. ADS-B 1090MHz and UAT 978MHz Software Defined Radio w/Local & Remote LNA Bypass

Super quick delivery, good packaging and item as described. Highly recommended.

I replaced dedicated dongles with this and I'm getting 150% more messages per second. Also, much less clutter.

Flycatcher works great, using with a RPi 5 and a roof antenna running headless RPi OS, tutorial on YouTube to setup quick and easy.

It works great but with dedicated adsb and UAT antennas I'm only getting a few hundred miles range which isn't bad but I would prefer hardcore observable distances. Worth the money get it.

TL/DR: This is a legitimately odd design in that it is USB powered but hat format. Once you get past that, it seems to work quite well for its intended purpose. You can install it on the bottom of the PI or use GPIO pass-through if having it over the GPIO pins is interfering with something for you so I don't see it as the end of the world. Longer: I've had various pi-based ADS-B solutions since Stratux and the like first started coming on the scene circa 2017. This hardware seems to be more oriented towards FlightAware or similar, but would work for a Stratux type build as well. This module solves the problem of physically mounting individual SDR modules without using hot glue. That's really about it. It results in a more professional seeming and solid seeming total device, except for the presence of two USB jumpers which probably reverse any reliability gains you might see. A standard SDR module has the USB A port built in so there is only one connector vs. the two connectors on these. Antennas are not included. If you don't have them that will run you another $20 or more depending on what you want. I somewhat agree with their decision not to include antennas in this configuration because it is more likely people will want to use it for FlightAware and maybe have a mounted antenna. Part of me wants to knock a star off for those two points, especially since for $75 Nooelec will sell you two USB RTL-SDR modules with antennas. But I am not sure that's really fair. It works, it does what it was designed to do, and this will solve problems for some people. Apart from antennas, this seems to have everything you need on the hardware side to turn your existing Pi into a FlightAware base station. Except the software and documentation. There are plenty of guides to setting up FlightAware or Stratux type systems so that isn't a huge problem. Performance seems top notch. I have a bag of RTL-SDR setups including some that are tuned for 1090 and 978 and this performed as well as the best of them. At the end of the day, the combination of performance and purpose makes this a 5 star product for me. If it doesn't match your purpose you can knock it down a star or two but the unit I received works well.